[bugs] Vegas 20 - summary (I hope) of the VST crashing issues

Foo-Bar wrote on 3/3/2023, 6:59 AM

In Vegas 20 the use of VST2 / VST3 plugins (of third parties) is almost impossible.

Plugins crash, Vegas freeze, files get corrupted, etc..

I have reported a lot of bugs, related to those issues and am still trying to narrow the problems down.

This report is about my findings.

Plugins do switch order when enabled / disabled and in view, this does not happen when not in view.
You can also toggle the state from the Mixing Console or by right clicking on the plugin tab (when not in view) and than they don't switch order.
Plugins do crash (or Vegas) when toggling the enable / disable state and in view.
Again; this doesn't happen when you do so when not in view.
And when crashing, the GUI of the plugin is never drawn completely (it's "stuck" before finishing).
When a plugin is initialized once (set on, or off) you can also toggle the state when in view, but they has to be initialized once before.
So this does look like an undo / redo / history thing.
Plugins do Vegas crash when undoing them (it overflows the undo-buffer of Vegas)
Everytime I "undo" an edit (no matter what edit) in Vegas, the complete (visible) plugin-chain is redrawn (which slows down everything).

Screencapture

https://i.ibb.co/1fcdCfd/fix.gif

In the first part (before the cursor leaves the screen) I toggle the state when plugin is not in view, this works.
The second part (after mouse leave and re-enter) I toggle when in view, this does crash.
And the de-esser plugin was already initialized and does not crash when toggling.

Conclusion

It has "something" to do with the visual state / canvas / redraw of the GUI and the plugin toggle / history / undo / redo system that Vegas uses.

Whatever it is, Vegas is almost unusable as a DAW or for more serious audio-editing.

I debugged on several systems, both with dedicated GPU and iGPU, processors, AMD / Intel / Radeon.

All issues (and more...) remain and do only occur in Vegas 20.

Comments

Yelandkeil wrote on 3/3/2023, 7:30 AM

You msut have bought a faked VEGAS. 😬😬

These days half the posts are from you, and we even don't know what HW you use, what a project you build and what parameters you did or didn't changed in the e.g. app preferences, etc...😌😌😌

RogerS wrote on 3/3/2023, 7:43 AM

While I appreciate the summary, the fastest road to solving this issue is replication. If you could provide a few specific examples with steps that others with the same VSTs could attempt on our systems that would probably be more useful to the developers.

What are these VSTs applied to. Tracks? Events? Does event type matter (wav, mp3?)

Is the auto resizing of Fx windows feature enabled in preferences? Does it matter in your tests?

A few of us have noted undo bugs with VSTs.

Foo-Bar wrote on 3/3/2023, 9:01 AM

You msut have bought a faked VEGAS. 😬😬

These days half the posts are from you, and we even don't know what HW you use, what a project you build and what parameters you did or didn't changed in the e.g. app preferences, etc...😌😌😌

I am a liable buyer of Vegas since 2003.

And I am not an "average" user.

I do use Vegas purely as a DAW.

I am a word-shaper.

So I do shape the sound of words, by adjusting the intelligibility of every sentence / start and end of a word.

Sometimes I work eight hours to adjust ten words on a row.

https://i.ibb.co/wWS1xRw/eq.gif

Above capture is how it works by finetuning EQ dynamically.

Vegas does say it supports VST, but Vegas 20 is extreme buggy when using professional hardware and software.

My basic set-up is worth more than $ 15.000,- and it still not works.

At the moment I am working at a project I started in 2019 and I work about 120 hours a week on this, 7 days a week.

In 2025 it must be finished (it's not payed, I do it for fun) and I am stuck to Vegas, since I started with it in 2019 and can't switch DAW in between.

If you are interested in the profession of word-shapers, take a look at this clip that explains;

- edit - This forum mess up the embed deeplink, you have to skip to 284 seconds.

I think Vegas should embrace people like us, because we fight against "the big three" (US based tech, like Adobe) and do power the base of there product.

Foo-Bar wrote on 3/3/2023, 9:03 AM

While I appreciate the summary, the fastest road to solving this issue is replication. If you could provide a few specific examples with steps that others with the same VSTs could attempt on our systems that would probably be more useful to the developers.

What are these VSTs applied to. Tracks? Events? Does event type matter (wav, mp3?)

Is the auto resizing of Fx windows feature enabled in preferences? Does it matter in your tests?

A few of us have noted undo bugs with VSTs.

I will upload a basic Vegas project with the settings.

Thx!

(main problem - besides the bugs - is that no one from Vegas ever answers and support is not existing)

Yelandkeil wrote on 3/3/2023, 9:25 AM

...is that no one from Vegas ever answers and support is not existing.

Sure!
Even us the users won't follow you, else you report the concrete issue that is reproducible under certain HW and project environment and so on.

How much you did spend or how long you do your job does really interest nobody.

Foo-Bar wrote on 3/3/2023, 9:48 AM

...is that no one from Vegas ever answers and support is not existing.

Sure!
Even us the users won't follow you, else you report the concrete issue that is reproducible under certain HW and project environment and so on.

How much you did spend or how long you do your job does really interest nobody.

I think meta-data is important, it's also shapes the problem and issue.

It's not "just an issue", it's the death of Vegas for professional audioshapers in our industry.

But don't worry : once the devvers do squash the bugs in their repo or dist. / I'll quit and you'll never hear from me again. Not sure what iteration / grunt-system they use, but since it's .git based, solution must be possible.

rraud wrote on 3/3/2023, 10:26 AM

@Foo-Bar, thanks for the link to the video which was interesting.

I have never heard of the term "word-shaper", On my planet (USA), a 'dialog editor' is usually the professional that does that kind of work.
That said, you should consider using Sound Forge in conjunction with Vegas. Like Vegas, you can use SF's 'Event' mode to slide words around, x-fade, copy/paste in addition to the 'usual' audio editing tools and Direct X, VST 2/3 and ARA) plug-ins. The Sound Forge Suite version also includes 'SpectraLayers Pro', which IMO is worth the upgrade price alone. If you specifically need a multi-track DAW, Reaper is good DAW option, which was inspired by the audio-only version of Vegas so it is similar. I am not sure it still opens Vegas <.veg> project files though.

btw, I am a pro PSM (production sound mixer) and encounter mumbling actors frequently, though the audio files are turned over to production at the end of the day and I usually do not hear it again until it hits theaters and/or TV.. I do audio post-production work for music and documentary type projects though.

Foo-Bar wrote on 3/3/2023, 11:34 AM

I already work with Sound Forge since 1997, but it's architecture blocks me from using it as a wordshaper (which is a normal definition in my workarea, btw).

I also work as a geräuschemacher for international movie companies, but some of it call it foley-artist or sound-designer (-architect) (or just a soundwall-editor).

Anyhow, Sound Forge works lineair and destructive, so it's not possible to use it - also because it's filecontainers are pretty obsolete and proprietor, software-wise.

My native is not English, so forgive me my grammar.

Since I use Vegas from 2003 until now, I (and Vegas) started out as a DAW, but I have moved on technically and Vegas didn't.

Bottom line : Vegas 20 says it's supports VST2 / -3 and it doesn't, it's buggy as hell in real life production environments.

I just want Vegas to work like they promise, not using other software to get the job done (which is not possible, since I am stuck to this workflow for the project I mentioned).

rraud wrote on 3/3/2023, 5:48 PM

Just so you know, the media in Sound Forge will not be overwritten if it is saved as a Sound Forge Project file <.frg> which is the non-destructive mode. though it takes a little longer to open the file.

Former user wrote on 3/3/2023, 8:09 PM

Bottom line : Vegas 20 says it's supports VST2 / -3 and it doesn't, it's buggy as hell in real life production environments.

I just want Vegas to work like they promise, not using other software to get the job done (which is not possible, since I am stuck to this workflow for the project I mentioned).

@Foo-Bar The VST module crashing started in VP19b636 and it's still crashing in VP20b326. It's reasonable for you to be annoyed.

RogerS wrote on 3/3/2023, 8:36 PM

Whenever you're ready with a project I'm sure a few of us will help test it as it's in all of our interest to get these VST bugs fixed. Some on this forum also seem to have the ears of developers as I've seen a number of issues reported here wind up fixed in future updates.

Nicholas-Delonas wrote on 9/25/2023, 9:54 AM

FWIW, I also cannot get any VST3 add-ins to work in Vegas 20. I'm trying to use add-ins from Izotope and Waves. They crash Vegas every single time when I try to add one to an audio track. Vegas and the add-ins are all licensed to me. In general, I find Vegas to be unbelievably buggy. I don't think I've ever used it for more than an hour when it didn't crash at least once. At release 20, it should be more robust. I'm considering looking at alternatives.

RogerS wrote on 9/25/2023, 10:11 AM

@Nicholas-Delonas Are you using the final update to VP 20? It came a long way for stability with VST3. Now that I have 21 which has further fixes to the audio engine I am not using 20 anymore.

I don't see many crashes unless I give it media it doesn't work well with.

Nicholas-Delonas wrote on 9/25/2023, 3:14 PM

@Nicholas-Delonas Are you using the final update to VP 20? It came a long way for stability with VST3. Now that I have 21 which has further fixes to the audio engine I am not using 20 anymore.

I don't see many crashes unless I give it media it doesn't work well with.

I do have the latest update. I hesitate to upgrade to 21 given the instability.

RogerS wrote on 9/26/2023, 8:51 AM

Can you use VST2s as a workaround with iZotope or do you have the latest VST3 only ones? Does the type of audio file make a difference- do you still have issues with wav files even?

While the marketing for VEGAS makes it seem like each version is a new program, it's really not. It's a rolling series of updates and personally if I didn't have 365 I'd probably give up on it as you really want to be on the latest version for things that are being rebuilt like the audio engine.